A 72-year-old woman jailed for meeting her granddaughter in breach of a court order has demanded an apology after claiming she was “treated worse than a dog” while in custody.

Kathleen Danby also believes she deserves to be compensated for her ordeal after spending two nights in prison and a third in a police cell before her three-month sentence was cut to time already served.

Mrs Danby, who was sentenced in her absence by a Court of Protection judge in April after breaching an order not to approach her granddaughter, told the Daily Mail she now felt shattered and very weak.

Claiming to have been left injured after being man-handled during her time in custody, the pensioner told the newspaper: “I want an apology from Derbyshire County Council and compensation for my ordeal and the ordeal my granddaughter has had to go through.”

The pensioner, who was arrested on Sunday while attending a Ken Dodd concert in Liverpool, alleges that she was denied pills for liver disease.

Mrs Danby was freed at Birmingham’s civil court yesterday after apologising to a judge, paving the way for a reduction in the three-month jail sentence.

However, outside court the defiant grandmother described a lengthy ordeal which had seen her being driven on a 200-mile trip between court and prison.

Wearing a large red coat, Mrs Danby said she found it difficult to believe the lengths to which the authorities had gone to bring her before the family court.

In April, a judge sentenced Mrs Danby to prison in her absence after watching CCTV evidence of her greeting the teenager, who cannot be named for legal reasons, with a hug outside a pub.

Reducing the sentence of Mrs Danby, from Kirkwall on the island of Orkney, Judge Sally Dowding told the pensioner: “I am satisfied she fully appreciates the difficulties of her position and what she must do, and I am confident she will comply in future.”

Contempt of court proceedings were brought against the pensioner by Derbyshire County Council, which is responsible for looking after her granddaughter.

The local authority alleged Mrs Danby was in breach of court orders made in September 2013, and January and April 2014.

Those orders banned Mrs Danby from having any communication, save a single supervised monthly phone call, with the teenager.

Judge Dowding said it was very sad Mrs Danby had failed to comply with the orders, which were imposed after a court heard that the pensioner had had a “very adverse effect” on her granddaughter.

The Prison Service declined to comment directly on Mrs Danby’s case, but it is understood her medication was verified for her to take during her time in custody.

A Prison Service spokesman said: “We ensure that suitable facilities are provided for elderly prisoners and that individual healthcare needs are met.

DR GEORGE HADDEN was remarkable in many ways: a 7ft tall Wexford man who lived in China, a medical missionary of the Methodist faith… and a husband who apparently trekked 10,000 miles to find his lost family.

American newspapers from 100 years ago tell the fantastical tale of what happened to Dr Hadden when he became separated from his wife during riots in China, and spent years before seeing her again.

Where it all began

A look at American newspaper archives fills us in on the story the couple told when they finally met again, three years after they last saw each other.

Dr Hadden had been living in Yungchowfu for seven years with his wife when they became separated during the Shangsha riots on the Yang river.

Mrs Hadden was pregnant, and gave birth to a boy on St Patrick’s Day, who she named Patrick. This was March 1910 and little Patrick wouldn’t see his father until he was three years old.

Understandably, Dr Hadden had little idea of where his wife Helen was, and went “wandering” as the Day Book reports, for three years trying to find them.

The Day Book reported that it was only when Dr Hadden returned to his old post at YungChowfu that he learned that his wife was in Hongkong.

However, the Rock Island Argus said that Helen Hadden (for some reason she remains unnamed in all articles) was sent with her husband’s knowledge to a different town, where she gave birth at a missionary settlement.

The Argus also said that after a year apart, Dr Hadden got in touch with his wife, and found out he had become a father.

He didn’t leave his post, however, but trekked through the country by foot until he was reunited with his spouse and child at Canton.

Fact and fiction

While Day Book reported that Dr Hadden was 7ft 4, the Argus said he was “nearly 7ft”.

While on his 10,000 mile trek, Dr Hadden must have had some incredible adventures.

In the colourful and not particularly racially-sensitive parlance of the time, the Day Book said that while walking across the fields in Kuei Yang Chow, the “natives” “looked upon him as a devil in the flesh and blood, and followed him 2,000 strong”.

Dr Hadden reported that he “walked a little faster” than usual as he was “pelted with clods of earth”.

Did the experience change the family? Perhaps these sentences tell it all:

We do know that eventually, Hadden returned to Wexford – where his family were in the drapery and outfitting business – at the age of 60, where he remained until his death at the age of 91. Helen Hadden lived to the age of over 100.

No doubt their son Patrick had plenty of tales to tell his own children.